356 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



of cultivation. The Chinese name is mai, the Sanskrit 

 sumana and godhuma, the Hebrew chittah, Egyptian br, 

 Guancho yrichen, without mentioning several names in 

 languages derived from the primitive Sanskrit, nor a 

 Basque name, ogaia or okhaya, which dates perhaps 

 from the Iberians,^ and several Finn, Tartar, and Turkish 

 names, etc.,^ which are probably Turanian. This great 

 diversity might be explained by a wide natural area in 

 the case of a very common wild plant, but this is far from 

 being the case of wheat. On the contrary, it is difficult 

 to prove its existence in a wild state in a few places in 

 Western Asia, as we shall see. If it had been widely 

 diffused before cultivation, descendants would have 

 remained here and there in remote countries. The 

 manifold names of ancient languages must, therefore, be 

 attributed to the extreme antiquity of its culture in the 

 temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa — an antiquity 

 greater than that of the most ancient languages. We 

 have two methods of discovering the home of the species 

 previous to cultivation in the immense zone stretching 

 from China to the Canaries : first, the opinion of ancient 

 authors ; second, the existence, more or less proved, of 

 wheat in a wild state in a given country. 



According to the earliest of all historians, Berosus, a 

 Chaldean priest, fragments of whose writings have been 

 preserved by Herodotus, wild whesit (Frumentur)i agreste^) 

 might be seen growing in Mesopotamia. The texts of the 

 Bible alluding to the abundance of wheat in Canaan 

 prove no more than that the plant was cultivated there, 

 and that it was very productive. Strabo,* born 50 B.C., 

 says that, according to Aristobulus, a grain very similar 

 to wheat grew wild upon the banks of the Indus on the 

 25th parallel of latitud'e. He also says ^ that in Hircania 



* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc. ; Ad. Pictet, Les Origines Indo- 

 Euro., edit. 2, voL i. p. 328; Rosenmiiller, Bihl. Naturgesch., i. p. 77; 

 Pickering, Chronol. Arrang., p. 78; Webb and Berthelot, Cartarie^^ 

 Ethnogr., p. 187; D'Abadie, Notes MSS. sur les Noms Basquet<; Be 

 Charencey, Recherches sur les Noms Basques, in Actes Soc. Fhilolog., 

 March, 1869. 



* Nemnich, Lexicon, p. 1492. 



• G. Syncelli, Chronogr., fol. 1652, p. 28. 



♦ Strabo, edit. 1707, vol. ii. p. 1017. » Ihid., vol. i. p. 124 ; ii. p. 776. 



